On Wed, 19 Apr 2000, Pedro Guerreiro wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 19, 2000 at 04:46:37PM -0400, Bob Hilliard wrote:
>
> > When the data section was first proposed on -policy, it included
> > some proposed rules for what should go in data. These seemed to get
> > lost along the way. I believe the original proposal provided that
> > data files that required specialized programs to access the data in the
> > intended manner would not go into the data section. This would
>
> I'm sorry, but with this reasoning, wouldn't all data be out of 'data'?
> IIRC, the data section came along because somebody wanted to package a
> monstrous amount of scientific data (I really don't remember what this data
> was all about). Well, wouldn't this data needed a "specialized program to
> access" it? And consequently be moved out of the 'data' section?
>
> /me just confused
Pedro is rightly confused. Some data will need specialized readers, you
don't want to read ATCGTTACCAGGTTAGGTC... using Emacs, do you? I was one
of those advocating a data section a while ago. What I had in mind was
packaging some catalogs for XEphem, moderately monstrous (<200MB). You
can't even read the specially zipped Hubble Guide Star Catalog (aka GSC)
using popen() from some other program.
In short: I don't know if the "specialized program to access" really
matters. It will be hard to judge in cases.
It would be more important to have some mechanism to prevent somebody from
packaging his family fotos. This point has been made clear by the whole
discussion.
Regards
-rbk.
--
Richard Kreckel
<Richard.Kreckel@Uni-Mainz.DE>
<http://wwwthep.physik.uni-mainz.de/~kreckel/>